Kristin Price returned to the red-bricked USC campus last week, having just completed her bachelor's degree and in need of a fresh set of transcripts for the Montreal university where she will start graduate school in the fall.
Four years ago she was senior class president at Thousand Oaks High School, where she put together an academic career piled high with honors and achievements. Today she is planning to pursue her doctoral degree, hoping to land a job as a college professor.
Not bad for someone who once was told she might not live past grammar school.
The 21-year-old academic standout was born with cystic fibrosis, a terminal genetic disease that kills many patients just as they are arriving at adulthood. Although advances in treatment have boosted the mean survival age to 31, the disease remains the No. 1 genetic killer of children and young adults in the United States.
Price knows the reality as well as anyone, that the clock that ticks down the minutes in everyone's life spins at double time for her. But she figures that if she has to race the clock, she might as well give it a run for its money.
"It has made me prioritize, to set goals and push myself to achieve them," said Price, walking in the shadow of the Tommy Trojan statue on the USC campus, where the past four years have been dominated by school exams and activities rather than doctor visits and hospital stays.
"In a lot of ways I see my disease as a vehicle for pushing me to do what I was meant to do," she said. "You've got to live. You can't live your life like you're going to die."
Ask anyone who knows her and they will tell you that Price has done exactly that.
Diving in where she left off at Thousand Oaks High, Price was a member of USC's student senate and a campus Christian organization.
She was a regular contributor to USC's literary magazine and volunteered two summers as a counselor for Troy Camp, a weeklong wilderness camp for disadvantaged youngsters organized and run by university students.
She graduated in May with a degree in communications and received the Order of Troy award for her contributions to student life at the university.
She also was among a handful of students in her class chosen to participate in the university's prestigious Leadership Institute, a course taught by USC President Steven Sample and veteran business professor Warren Bennis.
